


After the Storm

by anelusiveblep



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff, Gen, Happy, Heartwarming, genuine goodness, rat family, they are Safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 12:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12387972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anelusiveblep/pseuds/anelusiveblep
Summary: A loud storm hits Dunwall; 7 year old Emily is scared and finds comfort with her parents. Soft gentle fluff to distract from the harrowing Dishonored canon





	After the Storm

Thick drops of rain spattered against the tall windows of Dunwall Tower, a cacophonous rattle that rumbled in a tenor louder than the thunder that rolled menacingly in the distance. Wavering beams of yellow light from the lamps along the paths of the fortress broke through the harsh weather and cast a tentative glow in the lofty bedroom, barely enough to see by. 

The sky was moody and dark, uncharacteristically so for an early evening at the beginning of autumn. Not even the comforting light of the moon or stars was able to break through the swollen black clouds; the too-frequent flash of veined lightning accompanied by the angry rumbles of thunder lit the room up in a blinding white blast that was somehow worse than the lamps outdoors shining their weak, almost sickly light through the storm. 

An audiograph perched on the desk across the room churned out a quiet ballad, soothing winds and slow strings that brought the mind to a place of peace far away from the raucous noise of the night’s mood. It half worked; it brought down the mother’s heartbeat from hammering with worry and let her partially escape from her daughter’s vice grip, but the gentle ballad was unable to reach through the daughter’s panic to ease her frantic borderline-hyperventilation. 

The rain that came pounding down in sheets interrupted and accompanied the music in turn, and when the thunder grumbled at a particularly violent pitch, the brief void of noise afterwards would be just quiet enough to make out the cries and whimpers of the young girl.

Jessamine pulled her daughter closer as another flash of lightning warned of the impending thunder and pressed her lips against a mound of fine black curls to  _ shush _ the cries that were only moments away. The thunder broke, Emily jumped, and Jessamine could feel more than she could hear her daughter cry out into her arm. She smoothed comforting circles between her daughter’s small shoulders and rocked gently back and forth in the bed as she had during the early months when Emily was small enough to be swaddled and carried in her arms and would rest easy as long as she had a full belly and a warm chest to lean against. It wasn’t as effective now, but every soothing rub helped in its own small way, for both the women. 

Every flash of lightning made the muscles in Emily’s tiny body coil tight with tension while she waited the thunder; when the thunder came, she would jolt and let out a little whimper that her mother could barely hear over the dull pounding of the rain and the audiograph. At the tender age of 7, it was one of the first real storms that she had experienced in her living memory. She was used to the rainy, grey atmosphere of Dunwall, but the howling wind and the thunder and lightning was a new event, much stronger than the usual constant drizzle that accompanied the waterside city. It sounded like dragons were attacking the fortress, their heavy wingbeats the thunder and the lightning, fire that rained from their mouths. She was sure that if she looked out the window, she would see a massive reptilian eye staring through the glass at her, only to break through and scoop her and her mother up in its massive jaws with pointy teeth as tall as any of the guards in the fortress! Even Corvo would not be able to take on such a fearsome beast, and that was a whole other level of terrifying. But as long as she kept her face buried in the crook of her mother’s arm and therefore couldn’t  _ see _ that giant reptilian eye, it couldn’t exist (or so she believed...and she was very willing to believe that). 

Jessamine could feel more than hear the storm coming to an end, but Emily had no concept of that. Her night dress was getting wet from Emily’s slow tears and snuffles. The girl trembled, small body curled in Jessamine’s lap, shielded from the storm by her mother’s long legs. The fireplace had yet to be lit and only one of the few lamps on the wall was shedding weak light; Jessamine had hoped that the storm would break earlier, but the real dark of night was starting to show through the storm and she could only hope that the lowered light would finally lull her daughter to sleep amidst the torrential downpour outside before it broke entirely. 

The soothing music suddenly scratched to an abrupt halt and the hammering of the rain on the tall windows seemed to triple in volume, startling Jessamine and her daughter. Emily let out a long wail and her nails dug into her mother’s tortured back with a fresh fervor; Her sobs came in heaving gasps, the entirety of her small body shaking with a renewed terror. 

‘Shhhh, shhhh, sweetheart, it’s okay, just breathe,’ she whispered in the child’s ear, ‘You’re safe with me.’ She began humming a quiet tune in place of the halted music--Nothing in particular, not a song that could be played, but just a series of soothing hums to ease her sudden spike of anxiety as much as her daughter’s prolonged terror. Emily’s body shuddered as she clung to her mother, not so much in terror now as she was actually chilly. Jessamine removed her hand from her daughter’s back to grab the nearest blanket (that wasn’t trapped beneath them) and wound it around Emily’s shoulders, shaking it out a few times to ensure that her tiny feet were covered to the last toe.

Gradually, over what felt like an eon, Emily’s sobs began to slow. Her breath came more evenly and her snuffles eased, her fingers loosened their death grip on her mother’s nightgown and the constant tension in her body dripped off bit by bit. The storm still raged but the thunder came later after the flashes of lightning as it finally moved away from the tower and the rain settled to a comforting pattering on the windows. Jessamine felt herself starting to nod off to sleep, her head heavy and her eyelids drooping as Emily’s body began to slacken with a feeling of security. She shivered slightly and pulled her daughter closer, wrenched Emily’s face from the crook of her arm so she could see the peaceful expression that had settled there. Emily’s eyes were puffy and red, her nose was raw and snotty, and there was a line between her fine eyebrows but she was finally breathing slowly and her hands were no longer balled but resting flat on Jessamine’s back. She pulled her daughter up her lap so she could plant a kiss on top of her head and then laid her cheek down on that soft bed of curls and closed her tired eyes. 

The ordeal--as little of an ordeal as it actually had been--was over after a couple of long hours. The Empress and her heiress lay entwined in the big bed in the lofty, chilled room and slept while the storm receded and the stars began to peek ever so shyly through cracks in the clouds. 

When Corvo entered the room some time later, taking great care to  _ click _ the latch on the door quietly, Jessamine and Emily had begun a slow burrow into the heavy blankets underneath them while they slept, but had yet to make it entirely under and still cuddled tight together, chilly but comfortable. He lit a match and dropped it into a pile of kindling, waiting patiently crouched by the fireplace until the log there had tentatively caught flame and started gradually beating back the cold that had settled in the room. The curtains were drawn closed to muffle the tapping of the rain on the windows and shut out the lamplight and the lone lit lamp was shut off with a small “hiss” to leave the room dark but for the flickering of the young fire. 

Corvo finally stripped off his waistcoat and made his way over to the desk where the audiograph still hummed in a feeble attempt to replay the finished ballad. It was part of his duties now as Lord Protector to ensure that the Empress and her daughter could rest easily and that usually meant that he was turning everything off in their wake, like cleaning up after a hurricane (Emily was only seven, after all and still a righteous terror when she was so inclined.) He turned off the audiograph and the room was finally the quietest it had been in hours, the rain muffled and slowed, and nothing but the crackling of the fire and the soft breathing of the sleeping women to make noise. 

Jessamine’s raven hair cascaded over the stack of pillows she had used to prop herself up and Emily appeared to had found optimal comfort almost engulfed in her mother’s full embrace--legs and arms were both securely wrapped in her mother’s long limbs and Corvo could barely see her nest of black curls peeking out from above Jessamine’s shoulder. 

He grabbed another blanket from the foot of the bed and dragged it over them with a small smile--there had been  _ some  _ kind of attempt to burrow into the heavy quilt but their asleep selves couldn’t coordinate enough to get the blanket over more than a small portion of their arms. When Emily let out a small sigh in her sleep, he knew he had done a good job.

Corvo watched the Empress and her Heiress with tired eyes--their chests fell and rose in near unison and their sleep was so deep that their bodies hardly moved otherwise. A spontaneous song and dance at their bedside might not have been enough to wake them at this point.  Not a twitch or shuffle was to be had in the heavy slumber that came after the storm.  With a furtive glance around the room--he knew that there was no one else around to play witness, but he hadn’t survived in such a tricky situation this long by being careless--he laid a gentle kiss on the top of Emily’s head and kissed Jessamine’s cheek in turn. Though he couldn’t express it publicly, the two women lying in the large expanse of the royal bed encompassed his whole world, all that he cared about and everything he would die for. They could never know how much they meant to him, he thought--if his chest were to split open that very moment, there would be no heart for he knew that Emily and Jessamine held it already. 

He found himself rubbing small circles on Emily’s shoulder as his body came down from a hard day of work, tensed muscles relaxing only slightly: just enough that his shoulders began to sag and he suddenly ached with a wave of soreness that spread through his body, delayed through the day only by constant action. The end of the day always brought this, but spending time with his love and their daughter was enough to heal those temporary aches and pains, keep him going day to day, striving for perfection in their protection.

Security was as tight as it ever was, and he had personally checked the training regimens, guard schedules, posts, weapons, and everything that could use inspecting himself. The dozens of guards stationed around the tower were loyal, well taken care of, alert, and most importantly: attending their posts. The fact brought him comfort, almost as much as the temperate political climate and the boring going-ons of court and parliament; when politics were exciting, things tended to be more dangerous. 

With the rain finally settling down outside and the fire crackling away while his family slept on his exhaustion was rapidly catching up to him. He stripped off his waistcoat, his shoulder holster, his sword belt, and his boots and deposited them in a tidy little heap at the foot of the bed. If luck held out he would be gone in the morning before anyone took any kind of notice. He moved around to the other side of the bed and carefully crawled into place on the Emily’s other side, wedging his arm underneath the pillow and burying his nose in his daughter’s thick bed of curls. Emily didn’t even shuffle, sleep having come for her completely in only the way that children experience before the worries of adulthood plague even their resting thoughts.  Corvo slid his arm around both of them easily and cupped Jessamine’s shoulder, earning him the smallest of appreciative sighs. Emily curled back against him, drawn to his warmth, and Jessamine shuffled in turn ever so slightly closer to him. Holding both of them like this brought him a peace nothing else in the universe could begin to compare to. 

Just as sleep was about to overtake him, Jessamine’s shoulder moved under his arm and her small hand stroked his cheek, back into his hair where she removed the hairtie to card her fingers through his thick waves. They shared a tired smile over Emily’s head and he moved his hand to her neck in turn, running his thumb tenderly over the little dark moles that freckled her pale skin. She moaned almost imperceptibly and let her eyes flutter closed again, black lashes like ink against her skin. He closed his eyes in turn and let his arm settle, his body relax, the bed seeming to creep up to engulf him whole. 

The fire crackled lazily in the hearth and eventually warmed the room. By the time it died, Corvo and Emily were both snoring gently and Jessamine had managed to wedge her feet into the thick quilt underneath them all. The rising and fall of their breathing, like the tide, filled their tiny world while the last of the rain tapped at the windows. 

**Author's Note:**

> i want them to be happy and safe and warm
> 
> i dont like. ever write. but i love these people. this family.


End file.
